One of the many mysteries involving the Yuchean is the "isolate" nature of the language. How does a language remain an isolate without any physical barriers to protect it from encroaching influence? Three things have contributed to its being a lasting language isolate. First, the staunch pride and traditionalism of the Yuchi people who have guarded and protected the language in a way the French would envy. The language has not changed appreciably in the several hundred years that word lists have been collected. There are very few words borrowed into the Yuchi language, while more than a few have been borrowed from it into neighboring languages. Second, the language is just difficult enough that it was not learned by outsiders, and thus has remained rather pure. If it is related to any other Indigenous language, it is suitably distant as to not show any great affinity. This can only mean it has been separate for quite long time. Third, the Yuchi language served as a repository for the ceremonialism of the Great Medicine Society, and like Latin became institutionalized by that use.

The fact that the neighboring tribes did not speak any Yuchean was an incentive for the Yuchi to become multilingual, and being frequently involved in trade the Yuchi thus often served as interpreters from the earliest times. One can see this particularly in the word for "interpreter/translator" (yatik'e), as it has been borrowed by many of the Southeastern tribes from the Yuchean. It is clear from the scattered Yuchean names around the Southeast that the Yuchi were far more influential than has been accorded to them in most written histories. From the Atlantic coast where they left names like Tybee Island (dabi - salt) where they built saltpans and traded in salt, to Yazoo Mississippi where the name derives from "yazu" (leaf), and northward into Tennessee where a number of names as well as recorded history documents their presence. As their oral history states, the Yuchi were a major player in the Moundbuilding Culture before it collapsed from exposure to European diseases. They left a clear imprint of their central involvement in this first or pre-Columbian "United States of America."

Well into the Twentieth Century most Yuchi remained bilingual, and many were trilingual. The real threat to the language was a one-two punch of oppressive boarding school policy, and community dissolution in the war effort of the 1940s. The first created a generation forced to use English as their primary language, and the second dispersed the community so widely that many could not regularly converse in Yuchean. It is the dedicated work of a few dozen fluent speakers that has kept the language alive, even though at the brink of extinction.

In language resides the very heart of a people -- if you would know the people, you must learn the language. The persistence of the Yuchi language is a testament to the tenaciousness of the Yuchi people and their culture. They have survived despite all forces directed to extinguish them. While most other Indigenous peoples have accommodated and acculturated or given up, The Yuchi have endured far more than most other peoples, and still managed to hold on to most of what makes them a distinct and unique people. The Yuchean Language is certainly unique, as are the people who have used and continue to use it for communication.